Butterfly Gardening

I’m trying to document the beginnings of my butterfly garden. With just a couple tiny milkweed plants I attracted my first 7 Caterpillars. I quickly added two larger plants attracting even more. Hopefully by spring I’ll have the garden complete.

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March 25- Caterpillar party

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January 25-Now that my milkweed is restocked I’ve got 10 caterpillars inside.

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January 23- big day, released 4 monarchs today #11-14. #11 opened yesterday but it was very cold, #12 and 13 this morning and #14 had emerged when I came home from work. It was still a tad cool so I ended up moving the plant back into the mesh habitat and left the door unzipped so they could hang in there until it warmed up a bit for them to fly away.

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January 20- Was a bit surprised this guy opened up today. This is butterfly #10. It was a bit cold today but warmed up enough to realease this afternoon.

Also have a new collection of tiny guys that I’ve brought in from the cold now that I’ve been able to restock my Milkweed supply.

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January 15- Butterfly #8 and #9 emerged yesterday and I released them this morning. They enthusiastically flew away. My milkweed is pretty bare outside right now, I noticed a few eggs on leaves and some small cats so hopefully some of the new growth plus the new small plant I bought will keep them going. Currently I don’t have any more caterpillars, I have 5 chrysalis at the moment. I’m a little worried that the last two went too early as did my last caterpillar who I know did and died trying to cacoon. Of 16 caterpillars I have brought in, the first 9 have made it to butterfly and I’ve only lost two caterpillars so far.

Since my milkweed supply is a little bare I’m not bringing anymore in for now, and have left the ones I find now to nature. I’ve planted some seeds in my green house plus the 3 small plants I bought over the weekend I’m hoping to have a really nice garden for the Spring. I’m also going to look into getting a couple more habitats so I can separate the tiny guys from the big caterpillars and then move the Chrysalis into a third one to help prevent any disease spread.

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January 11- 7 chrysalis inside plus one caterpillar probably a few days away from becoming a little green pod too. These guys are outside eating up the rest of my milkweed so I had to get a few more plants today. The little monarch was flying around visiting the whole time trying to figure out what happened to all the leaves and flowers. The first caterpillar here saddly got killed by a wasp shortly after I took this picture.

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January 6- This morning we were greeted by two more butterflies(#6&7). These are the last two of the original 7 cats I brought in.

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January 5- find the monarch visiting the garden. Maybe one of mine.

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December 30- glad these three (#8,9 & 10) decided they were done living the Cat life, they were eating me out of house and home. Still waiting on #6 & 7 from my original cats to emerge, hoping they come out tomorrow since we are leaving for the beach for a few days.

I have 7 more tiny guys are hanging out in the cuttings now that the big guys are out of the way.

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December 29- Number 5 realeased onto the Milkweed plants.

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December 28-Number 4 shortly after emerging in the morning. It flew away immediately when we went outside.

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December 26th-number 3 emerged. It quickly flew off when released and did two circuits around the back yard around us. Later while I was working outside I had another visit.

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December 24- Our first Butterflies emerged on Christmas Eve. The weather was pretty dreary so we waited until Christmas morning to release them. I placed them into the Milkweed, there was even a caterpillar hanging out there.

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December 12-the three remaining Cats, Cat 5 getting big. Cats 6 & 7 left the “nursery” in search of bigger leaves.

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December 11-Cats 1&2 became chrysalis.

December 12 Cat 3 joined them and Cat 4 made its way up to see what was going on.

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December 9th- Got the new habitat (thanks Amazon Prime) The larger caterpillars almost almost immediately started heading to the top.

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Im already a few weeks in but wanted to include some background.

I brought in my first Monarch caterpillars between December 6 and 7th. In total there were seven all in different sizes. 2 of those were barely visible. I started everyone temporarily in an old aquarium until my butterfly habitat arrived.

I also had to run out and track down some more Milkweed since the two tiny plants I started with were going to last long with 7 hungry cats. Thankfully a local nursery had two fairly large plants.